Binaural pre-processing for contralateral sound field attenuation can improve speech-in-noise intelligibility for bilateral hearing-aid users

Abstract

We have recently proposed a binaural sound pre-processing method to attenuate sounds contralateral to each ear and shown that it can improve speech intelligibility for normal-hearing (NH) people in simulated “cocktail party” listening situations (Lopez-Poveda et al., 2022, Hear Res 418:108,469). The aim here was to evaluate if this benefit remains for hearing-impaired listeners when the method is combined with two independently functioning hearing aids, one per ear. Twelve volunteers participated in the experiments; five of them had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and seven were NH listeners with simulated bilateral conductive hearing loss. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for sentences in competition with a source of steady, speech-shaped noise were measured in unilateral and bilateral listening, and for (target, masker) azimuthal angles of (0°, 0°), (270°, 45°), and (270°, 90°). Stimuli were processed through a pair of software-based multichannel, fast-acting, wide dynamic range compressors, with and without binaural pre-processing. For spatially collocated target and masker sources at 0° azimuth, the pre-processing did not affect SRTs. For spatially separated target and masker sources, the pre-processing improved SRTs when listening bilaterally (improvements up to 10.7 dB) or unilaterally with the acoustically better ear (improvements up to 13.9 dB), while it worsened SRTs when listening unilaterally with the acoustically worse ear (decrements of up to 17.0 dB). Results show that binaural pre-processing for contralateral sound attenuation can improve speech-in-noise intelligibility in laboratory tests also for bilateral hearing-aid users.